And Mohammed Bouazizi did not set himself on fire so that Barack Obama could be reelected.

His death was an emblem of the despair he had to endure under the Ben Ali regime.

The world knew, after reading WikiLeaks publications, that the Ben Ali regime and its government had for long years enjoyed the indifference, if not the support, of the United States -- in full knowledge of its excesses and its crimes.

So it must come as a surprise to Tunisians that the United States supported the forces of change in their country.

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It must come as a surprise to the Egyptian teenagers who washed American teargas out of their eyes that the US administration supported change in Egypt.

It must come as a surprise to those who heard Hillary Clinton insist that Mubarak's regime was "stable," and when it was clear to everyone that it was not, that its hated intelligence chief, Sueilman, who we proved the US knew was a torturer, should take the realm.

It must come as a surprise to all those Egyptians who heard Vice President Joseph Biden declare that Hosni Mubarak was a democrat and that Julian Assange was a high tech terrorist.

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It is disrespectful to the dead and incarcerated of the Bahrain uprising to claim that the United States "supported the forces of change."

This is indeed audacity.

Who can say that it is not audacious that the President -- concerned to appear leaderly -- looks back on this sea change -- the people's change -- and calls it his own?

But we can take heart here too, because it means that the White House has seen that this progress is inevitable.

In this "season of progress" the president has seen which way the wind is blowing.

And he must now pretend that it is his adminstration that made it blow.

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Very well. This is better than the alternative -- to drift into irrelevance as the world moves on.